Are your Leaders Good, Great? or do they need to Get Better

When working on self-leadership and self-awareness, capability really comes down to knowing what you’re good at, what you’re great at and what areas you need to improve. Historically this is something similar to a S.W.O.T (Strengths, Weaknesses, opportunities, Threats) We call this—Good, Great, Get better. Because if you only focus on your weaknesses according to Gallup you'll see a 2% uplift in terms of improvement. However, if you focus on your strengths, it's likely you'll see a 12% uplift. I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather work on the things I like and am good at to see a great uplift, than spend time on something that doesn't light me up, and only has a small return.

GOOD When your skills are good, that’s OK. But you need to continually polish them up to elevate your knowledge and skills, so that you can amplify and capitalise on what you’re already good at. In todays climate resting on your ‘close enough’ or ‘good enough’ laurels won’t get you very far in the leadership game. Brendon Burchard, a three-time New York Times best-selling author, world-renowned high-performance coach and one of the world’s most watched personal development trainers, asks his leaders this important question:, ‘Do you want to be good? Or do you want to be great?’ When you’re going for just ‘good’, you might get there. Or you might get nearly there, leaving you with skills that won’t get you where you want to go. Courageous leaders certainly don’t want ‘just good’. They want to be great. Being great–or taking your skills from just good to great–means commitment. It means telling yourself that you’ll do the work you need to do and committing the time, energy and resources necessary to get you there. It means being firmly focused on where you are right now, and where you want to be. Not looking to see what else is going on around you. But focused on your role, your skills, your industry and your path to leveraging your good to great. Of course, the most important issue then becomes identifying what you need to actually do at a granular, day-in-day-out level to take yourself from great to good. And that is a question a number of my clients ask. When I work with leaders who are hovering at ‘just good’, I start by asking them: 1. Are you happy being good? Or do you want to be great? 2. What do you want to be great at? 3. What daily practice do you need to start to become great at X? 4. What are you already great at that perhaps you’ve forgotten? 5. What do others say you're great at that you haven't noticed before? Identifying where you want to be great, what you want to be great at and where you want this to take you is the first step. Then you’re in a position to leverage what you’re ‘just good at’ into what you can be absolutely great at.

GREAT I'm guessing you're already great at something, in fact most leaders will already be great at some things, many things. Sometimes the skills and capabilities that we’re already great at are the hardest to recognise in ourselves. These areas are sometimes referred to as our genius zones. And you may not even realise what your genius zones are because they come so easily to you. This bias is often referred to as ‘unconscious competence’ (you can check out a previous blog about competence here), and even if you aren’t able to see these areas of genius for yourself, others will recognise you for these skills and capabilities, which gives you excellent insight into them yourself. In other words, if someone compliments you on your ability to do something well, listen, and take it onboard. They may have just identified something that you’re absolutely great at. Identifying what you’re great at, or your genius zones, is important because it helps you identify the gaps in your capabilities. It will highlight where you need to backfill your skills in order to become excellent in every area that you need. This can be a confronting process. But it’s important to remember that everyone–every leader, every team member, every person feels a gap between their ordinary lives and the extraordinary lives they want to lead. And that’s why it’s vital that we adopt the practical steps needed to take us from good to great, and from ordinary to extraordinary.

GET BETTER (Your Practical Steps to Take You from Good to Great) Sometimes you may feel you’ve been doing everything right. You’ve been working hard, going to the workshops and the seminars, reading the books, listening to the podcasts–in other words, doing all the personal and professional development work that is expected. And while this may have worked for a while, you still may find that you’ve plateaued. Or you may find that despite all the hard work, you haven’t been able to achieve everything that you want for yourself and in your leadership career. If that's the case, i have a limited number private coaching spots open for next quarter. If you'd like to have a chat about your Good to Great journey, book in a time here.

Until next time, Eat the Frog, Get the Bird, Be the Worm, and ask yourself, are you good? or do you want to be great?